NO CRUNCHNO FLUFF

Back Then

Back when cloth diapers were the only option, parents and guardians (mostly women) had a community of grandmothers, aunts, sisters, church members, neighbours, and others around them, showing them the ropes and passing on knowledge about all aspects of caring for infants and toddlers.

Cloth diaper basics were passed down as a matter of course, and questions could be quickly answered by the nearest experienced woman.

Right now

Today, parents and guardians, in general, have less in-person parenting support. When considering new options, like modern-day cloth diapers, most of us turn online for answers.

There are a thousand questions you're likely to have when researching cloth diapers for the first time. For each one of those questions, you’re going to find a dozen different answers, which is confusing and misleading.

In Future

When there are too many options and conflicting opinions, I believe it’s good to have someone who has experience and knows what works just to give you some expert direction.

It is my hope that Cloth Diapers for Beginners will fill the knowledge and support gap for those of us who don't have an in-person cloth diapering community around us, like our grandmothers did, and just need simple, reliable answers.

JUST CLOTH DIAPER BASICS FOR BEGINNERS

April Duffy, Founder

Cloth Diapers for Beginners is a resource run by me, April Duffy (also known online as thewriteDuffy), to help you choose and use cloth diapers successfully.

When pregnant with my daughter in 2015, I knew I wanted the cost savings and environmental benefits of cloth diapers. I didn’t know anyone who had cloth diapered their own baby, but figured I would just buy some and follow the instructions, like every product you buy, right? Nope!

After looking in the big-box and baby stores in my neighborhood and finding nothing, I went online, typed in ‘best cloth diaper’ and within a few minutes I was completely lost and overwhelmed. There was a million options, many that didn’t really even look like diapers. Worse, practically none of the options were available offline; it was scary to think I would have to plop down a significant amount of cash (new cloth diapers are not cheap of course) and might not even get the right kind of diaper. So then, I began reading the reams of articles about washing problems, all the products you can’t use with cloth diapers, leak problems, etc., and cloth diapering went from easy to downright exhausting!

Thankfully, I began my research long before giving birth, which gave me the time to dust off my journalism skills and begin the long task of calculating costs and reviewing options. I also gained a simple goal: to share what I was learning–the basics of cloth diapering–to others in a way that was simple and easy to understand.

CDfB is Born!

Fast forward almost three years, through many diaper changes, potty training issues, and conversations about the concerns of other newbies, and I now get to use what I've learned to help others.

By experiencing first-hand how easy (and fun) cloth diapers are when all the complicated stuff is stripped away, I developed a love for them, which I hope to pass along here. At minimum, I hope Cloth Diapers for Beginners (CDfB) is useful to parents and guardians who just want to know how the heck to do this cloth thing without the degree in diaperology!